Anybody else thinks modern games are too long?

[Skynstein]

I have this feeling, and this stops me from playing games sometimes because I'm not sure if I enjoy doing all the stuff in the games (especially sandbox ones).

CoD gets criticism for having short campaigns, for example. Of course, the meat of the series is the multiplayer, but not everyone has the skill to succeed and have fun there. But there's no consensus on how long a game should be.

Classic games weren't long. Their length stemmed from difficulty and repetition. You could beat SMB3 in one sitting, but it was hard towards the end of the game.

Sometimes I feel modern games are too long. Like Assassin's Creed 2, for example. That took me 42(!) hours to fully beat. As a comparison, the first game took me less than half that. I enjoyed every bit of AC2, but 42 hours is too much to invest in a game when there's tons of stuff to play nowadays and a large chunk of gamers are adult people with little spare time.

What do you think?

[Rehab]

I haven't played an RPG that took over 100 hours in a while. I miss those.

[Freohr Datia]

I... personally don't think length seems to bother me that much at all. Not short, not long...

So that means no I don't at all mind long games. I suppose one difference is that I don't buy a ton of video games, I hardly own that many at all so I can dedicate as much time to each of them as I want

[Dagon]

I think times have changed and things with short campaigns can be accomplished easy (if you think about it). People don't pay $60 for a short complex platforming game anymore. That type of game is reserved for indies nowadays.

Looking back on mario and sonic on the genesis/snes makes you realize those types of games would probably only be $10-$15 if it had the same type of gameplay today.

[Skynstein]

I think times have changed and things with short campaigns can be accomplished easy (if you think about it). People don't pay $60 for a short complex platforming game anymore. That type of game is reserved for indies nowadays.

Looking back on mario and sonic on the genesis/snes makes you realize those types of games would probably only be $10-$15 if it had the same type of gameplay today.

I guess you're right. But other things impact on cost. Nowadays, gaming studios are huge! And all those people need to be paid. Technology that used to be expensive isn't anymore. And classic platformers suffer from depreciation, as any old product.

[eclipse]

I haven't played an RPG that took over 100 hours in a while. I miss those.

I want my money's worth out of a game, so I'm in Rehab's camp. The games I play had BEST have a minimum of 50 hours of content! From my perspective, games are getting shorter.

[algae]

I want my money's worth out of a game, so I'm in Rehab's camp. The games I play had BEST have a minimum of 50 hours of content! From my perspective, games are getting shorter.

As long as the length isn't overly padded. I think I'd take a 15 hour game with good pacing over a 50 hour one where most of that time is spent is grinding and backtracking.

[Wen Yang]

I want my money's worth out of a game, so I'm in Rehab's camp. The games I play had BEST have a minimum of 50 hours of content! From my perspective, games are getting shorter.

This. Very much this. If a game fails to provide me at least 40-50 hours of entertainment, it's not worth the money.

[Ein]

Are we taking into account replayability and such as well as possible co-op and versus options.

[Magical CC]

Nope. Modern games are way too short for me. Remember when Starcraft has 3 different campaigns with a ton of missions each and a lot of skirmish maps to play with? Or when every race in Disciple 2 has their own campaigns, instead of just a few mission like in Disciple 3? Or when Age of Wonder have a ton of races and a branch mission system? Or when Civ3 gives more contents then the new Beyond Earth? Or when your Undying gives you ton of hours to play, ton of toys to shoot and lot of spells to cast unlike Jericho? The only old games that are shorter than the new ones I can think of are...hmm....Max Payne 1&2, Half Life, Doom, GTA and Stronghold? Hell, even the Baldur Gate, Neverwineter and Icewind Dale games provides more hours of gameplay with a more complex gameplay than the new "classic" RPG Dragon Ass and Mass Retarded. And who can forget the "1 day to finish them all" Dishonored?

Eight hours of gameplay and shitload hours of grinding is not worth 60$. Not to mention asking me 50$ for some extend hours. It's ridiculous. "Dishonored is too short? Okay, we will make it longer by giving you 3 DLCs! For a price!" ... are you kidding me?

Edited November 17, 2014 by Magical Amber

[kingddd]

Depends on the game for me. I never judge the game by the length but by the gameplay's experience.

Even though I beaten bayonetta 1 and 2 within 6-8 hours, I still think it was better than a lot of the 40 hours of RPGs that I have played over the years.

No matter how much gameplay length you add to it, if the padding actually provides a genuinely fun experience than it was worth it. Padding hours like Sonic Unleashed's werehog stages and those parts in Bravely Default chapters are what I consider bad design choices and those gameplay hours were not worth the experiences to go through. It's why I can enjoy Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations for its 4 hour playthrough over the 10 hours in Sonic Unleashed.

So in my opinon, the gameplay length is not what makes the value of the game great but the actual experience you go through in the game. This also adds replay value to it.

Edited November 17, 2014 by kingddd

[Wen Yang]

Are we taking into account replayability and such as well as possible co-op and versus options.

Yes.

[RJWalker]

Nope. Rather, I feel that modern games are too short.

[Florete]

I want my money's worth out of a game, so I'm in Rehab's camp. The games I play had BEST have a minimum of 50 hours of content! From my perspective, games are getting shorter.

As long as the length isn't overly padded. I think I'd take a 15 hour game with good pacing over a 50 hour one where most of that time is spent is grinding and backtracking.

On board with both of these.

"Too long" is only a thing if the game is just overly padded, but that is much more rare than games that are just too short. It really sucks to find a great game and then have it end before you know it. Like, the Portal series is fantastic, two of my favorite games of all time, but you can beat each one in just a few hours, and I like my games to last. On the other hand, I've never once experienced a game I felt was too long, though that could mostly be because if I actually play it that much, it means I like it.

Modern games, if anything, are too short. You don't find most games to have a ton of content these days.

[BrightBow]

I don't think games these days are longer. I think it's more of an issue with padding. Like, games like Dragon Quest IX and Castlevania Portrait of Ruin have almost exclusively sidequests which consists of killing certain enemies over and over until the game decides to let them drop something. There is no challenge in that, it's just running around in circles for hours until you get lucky.

And it really annoys me that in what would otherwise be an excellent action game, I have spend countless hours on the weapon creation screen in Kid Icarus Uprising and still have barely used any of different weapons because of the absurd amount of grinding needed to create a weapon that can actually compete with the rest of your selection and the randomness with which weapon stats get transferred between different weapons. And I can only replay Chapter 20 so often before getting sick of it.

This is actually a big reason why I liked Fire Emblem so much. The series is totally linear. No running around in circles here.

[Kirie]

Colour me in the camp for games being too short these days. One of my favourite gaming memories when I was younger was playing through Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete on the PS1 which was a whopping THREE DISKS long. I think that kind of length is good and fun for a game (especially if you're paying a good price for it) and especially important for RPGs where plot and characterization are a key part of gameplay.

[deleted35362]

a lot of my favorite games can be beaten in hours of one day and i play them front to back many times because they make me want to do so. it sounds like the bulk of people in this thread are too conditioned by rpgs with loads of time stretched out to appreciate good replayable short games. rpgs after the story is understood amounts to clicking menus and watching things happen, so we get comments like...i dunno, "a game must be this long to be worth the money"? scratch that, it's not just rpgs.

oh hey, i just answered the question in the topic title, yay.

[EricaofRenais]

I like it when a game I buy takes me a long time to beat because I have a small budget for video games and so if I am going to be shelling out anywhere from $40 to $60 for a game it better last me awhile because I normally only buy 4 to 5 games a year at max. I like short games like Wonderful 101 and the Bayonetta series because you can go back and try to beat the game on different difficulty levels like Awakening, but my favorite games take me a long time to complete. Radiant Dawn made me so happy when I first played it because it kept going and going with chapters and I felt it was the first game I spent a lot of money (for me) on that was worth it.

[Dagon]

Actually the disc count comparison is kind of misguided since discs on consoles nowadays can hold more.

Edited November 17, 2014 by Dagon

[Skynstein]

I understand. So there's a consensus that games today are too short. However, IMO games were even shorter in the past, once you learned how to play them. The Rare N64 shooters, for example, I could finish them in a few hours, because the levels weren't very long. However, if you were just getting into the games, they could take longer, and they also had three difficulty settings and unlockable cheats for finishing levels under a certain time, which added to the replay value.

[Zera]

I judge a game's length based on how much I paid for it. As a general rule, I prefer 1 hour of fun for every dollar I paid, with 30 minutes per dollar being the minimum. Padding doesn't count, and replay value is usually included. If a game is any shorter than that, my rating out of 10 will lose 1 point. If a game costs $60, I expect to have fun with it for at least 30 hours. Naturally, games like Super Smash Bros. and Sin and Punishment win the length contest since they have nearly infinite replay value.

[Ike-Mike]

I think there is too much emphasis on playtime these days.
"I've reached X area now" or "my party is at level X now" is proclaimed less often than "I've spent X hours with this game" these days.

[Zera]

I think there is too much emphasis on playtime these days.

"I've reached X area now" or "my party is at level X now" is proclaimed less often than "I've spent X hours with this game" these days.

You'd really like Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. Four hours of awesomeness, nothing more, nothing less.

[Superbus]

I think the answer is yes. It's also no.

It's important to remember that right now, we're in a bit of a golden age. We have games coming out for every genre, and all of those games are the best that genre has ever seen. That's *every* genre. Point-and-click games are back! For the first time since LucasArts was alive and well, we can play good Point and Click? They're not my genre, but 4X games are, and there's a ton of those outside of the most well known ones. Don't like the new Civilization? OK, there's Endless Space, Endless Legend, Galactic Civilizations II, hell, the classic Spaceward Ho! is available for cheap on Android. Visual novels! VNs are coming back into force, with the Hate series being particularly good. Even the erotic ones don't suck anymore, if early thoughts on Littlewitch Romanesque are an indication.

The point of all of this is that if there's a game that's too long - like a JRPG - then there are tons of alternatives that aren't. I'm in my mid-30s and have full-time jobs, so I can't spend 100 hours on a JRPG, but I'll pump a few hours into a game of Civ V. Or an hour into a good indie game. Hell, I can dump a few minutes into a game of pinball, on a table I grew up playing, on my cell phone while taking a shit. If anything makes me want to break out into song and sing about a whole new world, this is it.

Games are whatever you want them to be in 2014, and it is glorious.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Superbus

[Crow the BOOLET]

I do feel like video games got shorter.

You can beat games within a couple of hours but this of course depends on what kind of game you're playing of course. Games like Final Fantasy can take more than 60 hours, but that's because most of it is cutscenes. While I do feel like games are shorter yeah but I do feel like there's also more ways to increase the play time artificially, through more use of cutscenes like the above example I mentioned and giving players more completion in the forms of achievements/trophies. Lollipop Chainsaw is one of my favorite games ever yes but its very short, to the point of beating it within a few hours. The only reason why I'm still playing it is because of getting that platinum trophy and having other modes in the game like time attack, score attack, etc. If its just nothing but a game it would go by a lot faster if that makes sense.

Maybe its just me having a lot more time on my hands to do these things.